Links from emotional distress to adolescent drug use: A path model.

Abstract

Administered anonymous surveys asking about drug use, emotional distress, and peer drug associations to 11th and 12th grade high school students (N = 563). Emotional distress variables accounted for only 4.8% of the variance in drug use. The addition of peer drug associations as a predictor variable increased the variance accounted for to 43.4%. A path model of adolescent drug use based on peer cluster theory was tested using LISREL, and this provided a good fit with the data. As predicted, peer drug associations dominated the prediction of drug use and mediated the effect of emotional distress on drug use, with the exception of a small residual path directly from anger to drug use. The hypothesis that young people take drugs to alleviate emotional distress does not hold up well; emotional distress variables, with the exception of anger, produced only very small and indirect links to drug use.

Adolescent Stressors, Psychopathology, and Young Adult Substance Dependence: A Prospective Study

“…However, the few prospective studies of the effects of adolescent internalizing symptoms on substance-use disorders have shown no effects (e.g., Chassin et al, 1999) or have suggested that only certain aspects, such as anger, are the specifi c mechanism of effect (McCreary and Sadava, 1999;Tarter et al, 1995). For example, anger has been theorized to lead to substance use either through poor adaptive coping skills (Wills et al, 1999) or through affi liation with deviant peers (Swaim et al, 1989).…”

Relationship Between Personality and Adolescent Drug Use: Effects of Substance Abusing Peers and Gender

“…These shared feelings can result in drug use, especially if youth consider this kind of behavior as rebellious and authority-challenging (Oetting & Lynch, 2003). However, Swaim et al (1989) reported that anger exerts both direct and indirect effect on drug use through peer drug association, and that this holds true for both male and female students.…”

“…Apart from correlation with drug use, these two personality traits consistently show a correlation with drug using or deviant peers (e.g., Swaim et al, 1989;Yanovitzky, 2005Yanovitzky, , 2006, and the association with drug using peers is one of the strongest risk factors for drug use among adolescents and youth. These findings indicate that there is a possibility that sensation seeking and anger do not contribute to drug use directly, but rather indirectly through association with peers who are drug users.…”

“…Most of the personality traits do not show strong links to drug use (Oetting & Lynch, 2003), apart from sensation seeking (Donohew et al, 1999;Yanovitzky, 2005) and anger Swaim, Oetting, & Beauvais, 1989;Nichols, Mahadeo, Bryant, & Botvin, 2008). According to Zuckerman (1994), sensation seeking is a biologically based trait that can be defined as the seeking of varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations and experiences, along with the willingness to take physical, social, legal, and financial risks for the sake of such experiences.…”

“…Yanovitzky, 2005Yanovitzky, , 2006Swaim et al, 1989), we hypothesized that personality factors of sensation seeking and anger have both direct and indirect effects on cannabis and inhalants use. In terms of indirect effects of personality factors, we hypothesized that more pro-nounced sensation seeking and anger predict association with greater number of substance abusing peers, which, in turn predict more frequent cannabis and inhalants use.…”